Russia's 'CNN' wants to tell it like it is

Page Tools

Russia is to launch a 24-hour English-language TV news channel
similar to CNN, in an effort to project an image of its own
choosing across the world.

It also wants to correct the "erroneous" Anglo-American
stereotypes about its people.

A Russian CNN may sound far-fetched but the project is already
well advanced, and the channel, to be called Russia Today, is
expected to go on air as early as next month.

Just like CNN, its reach will be vast. Offering a mix of
international news "from a Russian perspective" as well as domestic
news, it will be broadcast on cable and satellite TV throughout
Europe, the UK, the US and parts of Asia, as well as in the former
Soviet Union and Russia itself. With 500 staff, including 200
journalists, it will have bureaus in London, Washington, Jerusalem
and Brussels, and be based in central Moscow.

To ward off suggestions that it will be some stodgy Soviet-style
propaganda outfit, its director-general is a bubbly 26-year-old
called Margarita Simonyan, who once worked as a Kremlin pool
reporter for state TV, where she was apparently one of President
Vladimir Putin's favourite journalists.

Under her leadership, Russia Today has been busy recruiting
foreign journalists to work as presenters and consultants, and has
placed job advertisements in Britain and elsewhere.

Government-financed to the tune of $US30 million a year, it will
draw heavily on the state-controlled RIA Novosti news agency, and
will also carry some advertising.

The concept is said to be the idea of Mikhail Lesin, a former
media minister and now a trusted adviser to President Putin. As
long ago as 2001, Mr Lesin dreamt of such a channel. "We must
promote ourselves or we will always look like bears," he said.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the channel stoutly rejects any
suggestions that it will churn out Kremlin-sanctioned propaganda,
but it makes no secret of the fact that it wants to act as an
antidote to foreigners' often gloomy take on Russian affairs.

Indeed, President Putin told patriotic youth loyalists recently
that he was fed up watching foreign TV reports about his
country.

"I often watch foreign TV channels, and almost everywhere they
are saying the same thing," he moaned. "All they can talk about is
crisis and breakdown."

Svetlana Mironyuk, the director-general of RIA Novosti, agrees.
"Unfortunately, at the level of mass consciousness in the West,
Russia is associated with three words: communism, snow and
poverty," she says. "We would like to present a more complete
picture of life in our country."

She argues that there is no way the new channel could get away
with being a Kremlin mouthpiece, even if it wanted to, and has
vowed that it will be "balanced" and reflect a broad cross-section
of Russian opinion.

"It is very difficult to imagine that the channel could earn
itself a good name, good ratings and an audience if it was a tool
of blatant propaganda," she told Ekho Moskvy radio recently.

"The presidential administration is not managing this project.
It is aware of it."

But she is up against sceptics, not least in her own country,
where liberal commentators find it impossible to believe that any
state-financed media could be truly independent of the Kremlin.

Andrey Kolesnikov, on the influential Gazeta.ru website, said he
doubted the channel could really alter the image of Russia that
Westerners held.

"No TV or channel will convince foreign investors that Russia is
anything other than vodka, Matroshka dolls, frost, oil, mafia,
Putin," he said.

He may be right, but the Kremlin is about to give it its best
shot, anyway.